I’ve been randomly taking classes at my local community college over the past few years. I don’t need the classes for anything, I’m not trying to use them to get a degree, but I am taking them for credit, just in case. I’m paying for the classes myself, and not using any type of financial aid.

I have to pay for the classes myself as I make too much money for financial aid. In fact, I’ve never been eligible for financial aid, other than student loans. When I first went to college (many years ago) my parents made to much money. And even though I didn’t live at home with them, I was under the age limit and so there incomes attributed to my eligibility. My parents income prevented me from financial aid, yet they contributed no money to my actual education.

It’s getting time to sign up for spring quarter and I want to re-take a class I took in college many years ago. It’s been a while, and now they have pre-requisites they want for it. So I call up the instructor and say, “I’ve already taken…

In another effort to motivate the general public to illegally download music rather than listen to the radio, record labels are attempting to start charging stations a performance tax. Up until now radio has consisted of a free play for free promotion philosophy. By allowing stations to play the music for free, labels have received free music promotion for their artists, resulting in record sales. With declining sales, the music executives have decided that taxation is the way to keep their incomes large.

The end result of this tax will be a reduction in the variety of music played. And for anyone who has actually listened to the radio lately knows, there isn’t much variety as it is.

The top story on MSNBC today is…. Tiger Woods saying he’s sorry. Really! Our celebrity obsessed society wants to hear this and cares? Our news agencies think this is the most important thing they should be reporting on today?

Further proof that people are mindless retards! I of course closed the website, and am refusing to read or watch the news until sometime next week when this story goes away.

One of the morbid things that has happened to me since I started living the Dream has been that I am fat and skinny at the same time. How the hell can you be fat and skinny at the same time?!

I've lost muscle mass and replaced it with fat. The gym you say? Yeah, I love running in place like a freakin' hampster for an hour to find that I went absolutely nowhere. Then I can strain and lift weights, only to find that they are in the same place. Its not like I was with a bunch of Amish dudes building a barn. At least they have something to show for their labor.

Between being on a computer all day and driving everywhere because my paren't's generation decided that urban planning for people was no longer necessary, I am convinced I wont make the new retirement age of 67. I better start saving hard for an early retirement if I want one at all.

I pulled this off bripblap from a few years ago, yet it seems relevant to life in another large corporation I know of today. I like number 2 & 5 on the list as it is very much what I do.

1. You can’t get out of bed in the morning. If you wake up in the morning and groan, it’s not a good sign. During the one year in the last eight years of my working career I was excited about my work, I leapt out of bed every morning. If the prospect of going to work creates enough dread in your mind that you don’t want to leave bed in the morning, your job sucks.

2. You spend more time on the internet than you do working. I know everyone spends a certain amount of time browsing the internet at work – we’re all human. At the same time, if you spend more time at gothamist than you do working, it means your job sucks for one of two reasons: either you have stuff to do and it’s so awful you’re avoiding it, or your job sucks because you have nothing to do.

It’s been a week now since the last Super Bowl. The commercial were okay this year, but the Saints beating the Colts made the game well worth watching, and it was a well played game. The only real problem with last week’s Super Bowl, was of course, the halftime show. It seems that at some point, in the past few years, the people who schedule the halftime show decided that the general public wanted to hear aging rock bands do medleys of their socks that were hits about 30 years ago, even though half the audience doesn’t even know who the band actually is.

This year’s show featured The Who, who haven’t had a hit since the 70’s, and their only recent claim to fame is their songs do the openings for the CSI shows. And of course that they aren’t dead yet. Although, by watching the halftime show the dead part could be disputed.

And to be honest, I could even handle the aging rock bands doing the halftime show. I’m a big Rolling Stones fan, and would have liked to actually see them sing one …

Has anyone else noticed that the Republicrits and their break-away whacko Tea Baggers always define things in negatives? They don't want a government healthcare option; they don't want gays to marry, serve in the military, or even exist at all; they don't want the president's agenda to succeed; they don't want this, they don't want that...

The problem with ultra-conservatism is that it wants everything to stay the same, good or bad, with complete dissregard for rapid changes in the world.

It is very convenient to let those who can generate original thought come up with the ideas and then just squash their merits as they come. Critisism is fine. In fact, it is civic duty. But empty, ignorant attacks on issues you don't understand fully should not be missconstrued as critical thinking.

So if any Red Righties are reading this now, I challenge you to generate your own ideas and tell the rest of us what it is you do want. The only rule is that you cannot define it …

I woke up this morning and suddenly realized that my life is spent "boxed in". I woke up on a box, inside of a box contained in a larger box, comprised of a larger box still, trying desparately to find the snooze button on the box that woke me up.

Then I stepped into another box to wash myself. I dressed, then left my living box and into my transport box where I drove to a big corporate box. I went up the stairs and into my office box where I am now typing on little boxes while staring at a box. I have a meeting in a little while in another office box where my boss will tell me to "think outside the box".

Later, I will leave the office box inside the corporate box to my transport box and return to my living box inside the condo building box. I'll stare at another box for a while before going back to the sleeping box. ET CETERA.

I think I need to take a vacation somewhere sunny and flat. The boxes are starting to piss me off. - Eccentri City

I’ve had a checking account with Washington Mutual for well over 10 years, and been pretty happy with the service. So when I started a photography business, it seemed like an easy decision to also open my business checking account with Washington Mutual as well. As everyone should know by now, WAMU went out of business last year and was sold off to Chase bank. And with that, all my accounts transferred over. For the most part, nothing much seemed to change for me other than the logo of the bank I used. That was until my last business banking statement.

On the statement I received a $5.33 service fee. And in reading the statement there was a notice at the bottom that said, “You can waive the monthly service fee on your Chase Business Classic account by maintaining an average checking balance of $4,000 or more during the statement period,” Just to be clear, I use this account as a small business photography checking account. My balance in that account has never been over $4,000.

Some of you might have noticed a rotating icon with the label “share this” on the bottom of a few of our posts here on the Cranky Monkey. Well, if you like that posts and want to send it to Digg, Sumbleupon, or even Facebook, select it and it will open a new window that you can sent that well written and totally entertaining Cranky Monkey post to.

Note: sometimes you have to refresh the page in order to get it to show. I’m not sure why that is. And I’m not super motivated to figure it out and fix it.

At what point did music from the 90’s start falling into the oldies category?

I was driving with a friend the other day, and before deciding on what type of music to play I asked, “what kind of music do you like.” This friend responded with, “I like all music.” Bullshit, no one likes all music. Instead of backhanding this friend for responding so lamely to my question, I asked him to clarify. He eventually said, “oldies for example.”

Not thinking that this person was about 10 years younger than me, I put on my oldies playlist. Which is a bunch of 60’s and 70’s music. As the drive progressed, it turned out that this person was actually thinking more like 90’s music. WTF! 90’s is oldies?!?! I of course was forced to pull over and kick the douche-bag out of the car at that point.

So I recently received the February edition of National Geographic, and couldn’t help but be shocked by this month’s feature story. The story is about a Mormon who has 5 (obviously not legal) wives and 46 (totally legal) children. I haven’t read it yet, and honestly don’t care what the point of the article will be. I also don’t care about the guy having 5 wives. If that many women want to be married to him, and he wants to have 5 wives, more power to the happy wacky family. What I have a problem with is the 46 children!

Last weekend, I hung out with a small group of teachers. Out of our small group not a single person was interested in having a child. These people are intelligent, well educated, and are the type of people we want teaching our children. But they also see the world for the overpopulated place it is. They see children for the hassle and cost that they are. And they enjoy having lives that revolve around each other rather than children. And they all seem very happy togethe…